


Shared Solicitude

by Phrensiedom



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/referenced pregnancy loss, Original Character(s), Post-Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), Post-Game(s), Suicidal Thoughts, Trans Character, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:26:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27577159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrensiedom/pseuds/Phrensiedom
Summary: When Simon and Ivy are reminded of their shared past, they struggle to determine what supporting one another safely looks like.
Relationships: Markus/Simon (Detroit: Become Human)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Shared Solicitude

“Daddy, please wake up.”

Simon’s stasis protocols snapped off, and his eyes flicked open. He stared up into the darkness for a few moments, struggling for the moment to recall where he was and what had woken him.

“Daddy?” Ivy’s voice was raised just above a whisper and trembling.

Simon blinked a few times and turned his head to find Ivy standing next to him beside the bed. Her favorite fleece blanket, which was patterned with ocean waves, was draped over her shoulders and clasped in front of her chest, the head of her stuffed sea otter tucked beneath her chin. Even in the dim light, Simon could see the tear-tracks shimmering on her cheeks. 

“Ivy?” Simon began to raise himself but found Markus’ arm draped across his chest, his hand loosely cupped around his shoulder. The man was a natural cuddler and was difficult to rouse from stasis, quite unlike Simon, who could be woken by a fractional hitch in the ticking of a clock. It was another quirk of deviancy that no one had quite deciphered yet. Simon untangled his hands from the sheets and moved Markus’ arm to rest on the mattress. Sitting up, reluctant to remove his bare arms from the pleasant warmth beneath the covers, he extended his hands to her and said, “What’s wrong, little kitten?”

Ivy parted the blanket to allow him to pick her up beneath the arms and place her in his lap. She rested her head against his shoulder and pulled her blanket tight about herself again. Simon looped his arms about her and placed a kiss on her forehead, concerned but not wishing to push her.

“I had a bad dream,” she whispered. 

Simon inclined his head to better see her face. She met his gaze, fresh tears slipping from the corners of her eyes and rolling down her face. Giving her a gentle smile, he swept the tears from her cheeks, which raised a short-lived smile on her own lips.

“Would you like to tell me about it?”

Ivy considered for a moment, looking down at her otter, whom she had named Daisy, as she stroked its soft, cottony head. She swallowed hard and said, “I don’t know.” 

Simon began idly rubbing her back, saying, “Are you afraid it will make me sad?”

Ivy nodded, tears again welling in her eyes, which she dabbed away with a corner of her blanket. 

“It’s my job as a daddy to help you feel better. If it makes me feel a little bit sad, that’s okay, because I can handle it.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, her voice small and choked.

“Absolutely sure.”

Ivy hesitated for another moment, her gaze locked on Daisy, before drawing in a trembling breath. “It was about baby Jane.” Simon closed his eyes and rested his chin on Ivy’s head. This was going to be rough. “She didn’t die, but she was so sick, and we were all scared. Mama Eliza stopped hugging me or playing with me or talking to me. She wouldn’t even look at me anymore, so I just stood in the corner and got dustier and dustier.” She paused to sniffle and draw another shaky breath. Simon’s heart broke to see her so distraught, but he understood her sadness well. He had also lost his relationship with Eliza prior to his deviancy. “And you didn’t notice me either, Daddy. You were too busy helping with the baby to remember me.” Shame rose within Simon’s throat, bitter, nearly suffocating him, and he gave her a gentle squeeze. “Then Jason decided to throw me away, and I screamed when you picked me up to put me in the garbage, and I woke myself up.”

While the real-life situation they had experienced together wasn’t nearly so simplistic, the basic characteristics of the nightmare mirrored reality. Eliza had rapidly descended into a deep depression after the stillbirth of her daughter, she had neglected both androids, and Simon had failed to say or do anything about Ivy’s, or his own, mistreatment for far too long. True, he had still been under the strong influence of his programming at the time, but that didn’t decrease his disappointment in himself. He should have seen the warning signs in Eliza’s behavior, he should have deviated sooner, and he should have brought Ivy with him when he ran. 

He couldn’t fix the egregious errors he had made, just as he couldn’t mend the physical damage inflicted on Ivy’s body or the emotional damage inflicted on her mind. Simon knew this to be true but silently berated himself anyway, growing increasingly despondent by the second, his jaw tightening, his stomach roiling, nausea rising in his throat. 

After a few long moments of silence, Ivy looked up at him and said, “Daddy, are you okay?”

Simon snapped to, his parental instinct to protect her by keeping her in the dark kicking in hard. He said, “Yes, of course.” 

“But your LED is red.”

Simon raised his fingers to his right temple and met Ivy’s half-broken and overflowing eyes. He gave her a weak smile of contrition. “I can’t lie to you. Thinking about that time in our lives is hard for me.”

Ivy’s face crumpled, and she collapsed forward onto her legs, one hand dropping the blanket and rising to cover her mouth, the other clinging to the stuffed otter pinned between her stomach and her thighs. The sound of her smothered sobs tore Simon’s chest open, forcing tears from his eyes so rapidly he didn’t even feel them coming. He drew a breath to try to console her, but she shoved his hand from her shoulder and slid off the bed before bolting out the door, leaving her blanket and stuffed animal in her wake. 

Simon watched her go through a film of tears, immobilized by shock and a small measure of dissociation from his body, until she was out of sight, her sprinting footsteps thumping down the hallway. His instinct was to immediately follow, but he suppressed it, recognizing he needed a moment to settle himself before he could help Ivy do the same.

Glancing down, he found Markus still in stasis despite the noise their distraught daughter had made. Simon was glad. He would have loved Markus' powerful arms wrapped around him, his low, subtle voice that remained tranquil during even the most frightening situations providing him encouragement and advice on how to approach such a touchy subject that wouldn't prompt panic and painful thoughts. But the unique prototype android needed as much time in stasis as possible. With his baseline stress level hovering around 80, he was dangerously close to quite literally stressing himself to death. 

Simon would sacrifice his own life before allowing Markus to die such a horrific death, his processors bursting into flames within his skull, catching other critical biocomponents on fire until he burned from the inside out. Even if Simon survived his own stress response to the death of his soulmate, the loneliness and grief would ultimately dredge up his suicidal thoughts, and he doubted if even Ivy could keep him from removing his thirium pump regulator until the timer reached zero.

Simon placed a kiss atop Markus' head and crawled out of bed, shivering. All three members of the household had the ability to sense temperature, making it necessary to monitor it, and they followed the typical guidelines for heating and cooling a house that humans abided by—warmer during the day and cooler during the night. He paused to gather Daisy and Ivy's blanket before following his daughter, closing the door to the master bedroom as silently as possible despite knowing it would take a slam of the door to wake Markus. He preferred to not chance it. 

Simon found Ivy in her bedroom, curled into a shivering, chattering ball and sitting on the chair she had taken from the kitchen table and claimed as her own for the explicit purpose of gazing out the window in her bedroom. This particular night, her eyes were turned upward, watching snowflakes drift lazily down from the heavens, undisturbed by wind. 

She didn't look away when her father entered the room, nor even when he draped her ocean blanket over her shoulders and balanced her otter on her feet, squatting beside her. Simon placed his hand on her back, prompting her to finally blink and send a couple more tears sliding down her cheeks. The knees of her flannel pajama pants were damp, and Simon discovered why as Ivy wiped her tears on them. She drew a deep, trembling breath and turned her head to meet her father’s gaze. 

“I didn’t mean to make you sad,” Ivy whispered, her voice choked. 

“Ivy,” Simon said, “I’m an adult, and you are my child. Keeping you safe and happy and healthy is my number one priority. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

She gave a single nod and shifted to sitting criss-cross, her eyes focused on Daisy, whom she held in her hands, clearly not convinced. 

“What makes you not believe me?”

Sniffling, Ivy shrugged and turned the otter plush over to examine its belly—anything but meeting her daddy’s eyes—and said, “I know you love me a lot, but—” She paused and swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. “—but no one can love me that much. I’m broken, and I’m bad, and I can’t do anything right, and I’m selfish, and—”

Simon gently took her wrist, interrupting the self-hateful spiral she had tripped into and drawing her attention. Stroking her back, he said, “You are none of those things, little kitten. You are perfect the way you are, you don’t have a bad component in your body, you learn at the speed of lightning, and you are the most giving person I know.” Tears again appeared in her eyes and slipped free. “I do love you that much. I love you as big as this room,” Simon said, spreading his arms up, fingers splayed. “I love you as big as this house, this city, this country, this hemisphere, this planet, this entire universe.” 

A tiny smile appeared on Ivy’s lips, and she giggled, turning to look back at him once more. She bent and hugged him around his neck, Daisy sitting on his shoulder for the time being. Simon enfolded the little android girl in his arms, saying, “Do you believe me now?” She nodded, and he continued, “So don’t ever worry about hurting me when you need help, okay?”

“Okay,” Ivy whispered, releasing her hold on him and sitting up. 

Simon gave her a smile and swept her hair back from her face, a visible shiver passing through him due to the chill in the room. Ivy frowned with worry, eyebrows pinched together, and said, “Daddy, you’re cold.” She hopped down from the chair, handed Daisy to Simon, and grabbed a fuzzy blanket from the pile in her calm corner, bringing it back to where her father remained crouched. Her lips set in determination, she spread it over his shoulders and drew the two edges together in front of his chest for him to hold it closed. 

Simon followed her instructions and, once she was finished, hummed, saying, “Much better. Thank you.” 

Ivy beamed and accepted Daisy as her father extended the soft sea otter to her. 

“I think it’s time we get you back to bed,” he said.

“Can I sleep with you and Dad tonight? I’m still scared from my dream.”

Simon studied her mismatched eyes and nodded. “Only for tonight.”

Ivy nodded firmly and repeated, “Only for tonight.”

Simon pushed himself to his feet and extended a hand for her to take, which she did after a few moments of juggling Daisy to free up one of her hands. They headed into the hallway, and Simon said, “You cried quite a lot and might be a bit dehydrated. Would you drink some thirium if I got you a cup?”

Ivy nodded. Though drinking the bittersweet liquid wasn’t her favorite, she understood it was necessary and never fought it. In the kitchen, her daddy poured a full six-ounce cup from the transparent bottle, which she gulped to get it over with, giving herself a deep ocean blue thirium moustache above her upper lip. She blushed a similar faint blue and licked it away when it was pointed out to her. 

They again held hands as they returned to the master bedroom, where Markus hadn’t moved so much as an inch. 

Simon lifted Ivy onto the bed beneath her arms before placing the blanket she had gifted him at the foot of the bed and lying down beside her. She lay curled up on her side, facing her daddy, her dad at her back, and clutching her blanket and Daisy to her chest. Simon mirrored her position, gladly taking hold of her hand when she held hers out, the feeling of her stiff, burned fingers briefly tightening his throat. 

Ivy smiled and whispered, “G’night, Daddy.”

“Good night, Ivy,” Simon said, smoothing her disheveled hair, content to gaze at her sweet face until she drifted off, which didn’t take long as it was toasty warm between the sheets. His heart ached with affection for her, and he placed the softest of kisses on the disfiguring crack in her skull, murmuring, “I love you, Ivy.”


End file.
